The journey starts today

Today is the first day with Digia as the new owner of Qt. “Day 1” as we have called it internally. Today, Digia, with its new strong team, will start the journey to unleash Qt’s true potential together with the Qt ecosystem. Together we will make Qt thrive.

Digia Door Sign

Earlier today we issued the official announcement summarizing some of the high level plans and directions. I wanted to write a bit more about our plans moving forward and to answer some of the questions we have been asked since we announced the transaction in August.

I am really happy to see so many of the talented Qt people joining Digia. Everyone is excited about the things we can achieve together. Qt is an amazing technology, unmatched by any other solution for cross-platform application development. Our intention is to keep Qt available for both commercial and open-source licensees and to actively continue developing both. Having a strong and united Qt community, taking the technology forward is tremendously important. Digia wishes to keep this ongoing and improving as we move forward together.

As part of the transition we have taken the responsibility to fund and operate the Qt Project and its infrastructure. Most of the systems have now transferred, and we are in process of transferring the remaining items, most importantly the CI system. Let’s go through some of these, so that you have more visibility to what is happening.

Copyright transfer

Let’s first visit a bit what does it mean in practice that the Qt technology, copyrights and trademarks have now transferred to Digia. To reflect the change, we are now changing the copyrights in all the applicable files of the Qt f ramework. You can see the progress of these changes in the source code repository as they are implemented. We expect to have these done before the next Qt release.

Old Flag Down

The copyright transfer also means that Digia is the licensing counterpart for both commercial and open-source versions of Qt. There are no changes done to the licensing: Qt continues to be available under commercial, LGPL and GPL license. It is your choice which one you see the best fit for your project. For details on the licensing, please visit our Qt Licensing page.

In addition to the copyrights, we now own all the Qt trademarks. We are in the process of setting up a new partner program and other needed items to govern the use of the Qt logos and other trademarks.

Qt Project and CI infrastructure

New Flag Up

As part of the open governance, the Qt Project is hosted by a non-profit foundation. Digia provides the needed funding for the foundation in order to finance the hosting of the Qt project information systems including, the qt-project.org main site, code review and bug reporting tools, for example. Operation of these continues unchanged from this day onward.

The gatekeeper for the quality of Qt is our continuous integration, a.k.a CI, system. It is a combination of high build capacity and sophisticated procedures for constantly verifying that all modifications done to Qt are working correctly. The system is currently running at Nokia and we are in process of transferring it to the Digia data center. In addition to transferring the system, we are also changing the main tool to Jenkins. After this change, it will be much easier than before to connect external build agents to the Qt Project CI system, which helps in validating additional platforms.

We are targeting to complete the CI system transfer in about one month and naturally keep it operational during this time. After the transfer has completed, we will have some additional capacity available compared to the current technical setup. This will help us to better validate more platforms than before. We will also keep our old CI system operational for building and packaging the Qt releases during the transition.

Mobile platforms

HBD Qt – Day 1

One of the key items we are working on is to create Android and iOS in such a way that they are available for everyone, through the Qt Project. We want to have both Android and iOS platforms fully available to both commercial and open-source users of Qt. We see tremendous value in having these available for the widest possible audience.

Support for both iOS and Android already exists independently, where community driven efforts to run Qt 4.8 on the platforms has been successful. Leveraging these initiatives to provide full support within Qt 5 would be beneficial for the Qt Project. At the moment, the Android port is available from the Necessitas project hosted by KDE . It is possible to leverage Necessitas for both commercial and open-source Qt users already today. Additionally, we have had initial discussions with the main developer of the Necessitas project and both parties think it would be a good plan to continue development of Qt 5 support within the Qt Project.

Cake Cutting A-la Berlin

For iOS there is a Qt Labs research project done by Eike Ziller (now part of Digia Qt R&D) to run Qt on iOS. Even though it is more a proof of concept, than a full platform port, it nicely shows what is possible already with Qt 4.8. There also exists a commercial-only Qt 4.8 iOS plugin available from Mediator Software , which can be leveraged to create Qt 4.8 based applications for iOS. Although not as complete as the Android port, it can already be used for many kinds of Qt applications. We will continue discussions to see whether it would be possible to leverage it within the Qt Project. We will also need to decide how to tackle the current iOS restrictions that hinder use of Qt Quick.

Our main focus for developing Android and iOS support is on Qt 5. We will start the work on top of Qt 5.0, within the Qt Project, and target having these available for prime time in conjunction with the Qt 5.1 scheduled release for ~ Q2/2013. However, as the currently available Qt 4.8 based Android and iOS projects prove, it is possible to create applications already with 4.8 and 5.0.

Focus on Desktop, Embedded and Mobile

The Oslo Qt Team in Full Effect

Qt has a large and continuously growing user base within desktop and embedded platforms. We aim to continue developing Qt further to meet the needs of these users, in addition to mobile. One of the key strengths of Qt, is its capability to create modern and interactive applications across a hugely diverse range of operating systems and devices. Unmatched by any other technology, Qt truly meets the cross-platform promise – at the same time delivering full native performance. One example of the work already ongoing is Qt Quick desktop components. And, as said before, we will make sure widgets are a viable option also in Qt 5.

Development of Qt 5.0

The Berlin Qt Team Celebrating Day 1

Qt 5.0 is the current large focus of Digia’s R&D efforts as well as the main focus of the whole Qt Project. So far we have released the Alpha and the first Beta release and are now working hard to soon release the second Beta. Based on the feedback we receive, we will iron out the remaining glitches and aim to deliver the 5.0.0 release during Q4/12. We are making the effort in migrating to Qt 5 as low as possible and recommend that all active projects eventually migrate to it. After you have moved the ongoing development to Qt 5 it is easy to start using the new goodies it has to offer.

Today is Day 1 – the first day of Qt at Digia. It is a major milestone in the long history of Qt and marks the beginning of a new journey. We want to make Qt the most widely used cross-platform application development framework in the World. Together with a vibrant Qt community we can make it happen. We know it is the best, and we intend to keep it that way.

73 comments

Congratulations on the “Day 1″ event! I hope everyone can now breathe and leave the troubles of the past few months where they belong: in the past. I am really looking forward to nice things coming from Digia and the team that has now just joined it. You continue to have my full support in this endeavour and on future ones like support for Android and iOS.

The only nitpick I have is the phrase “owner of Qt”. I’d like to ask that the official communication from Digia stop using that phrase. Fully one third of the contributions to Qt in the past two months came from people who work for other companies or for themselves. The Qt Project was set up to be the rightful “owner” of Qt and it is the entity where all decisions are made, under the rules of the Open Governance.

Ok…I see the changes with Digia…the future seems not so bright for the no-paying user
I start to predict the future:

*) The GPL version is smartly hidden in the new commercial-only www site (now is alredy done).
*) New versions of qt will be released only for commercial version of the SDK and we will see upgrade
to free QtSDK even more in late respect the commercial version
*) Key components of QtSDK will be available only on commercial version or will be limited/unusable in some
way by the GPL version.
*) Same for new version of IDE Qtcreator an so on…
*) Funny scaring suggestion about GPL: “You should develop with a Qt commercial license if you:…bla bla bla” here:http://qt.digia.com/Try-Qt-Now/
and, wonderful, here:http://qt.digia.com/Product/Licensing/
“LGPL and GPL are complex licenses that contain many oblications and restrictions you must abide with.
Always consult an experienced lawyer before choosing these licenses for your project.”

I think they are moving to make the GPL version *Technically* more inferior and
limited over the commercial one to force all the user to pay.
This is not the idea besides Qt’s LGPL license that make a lot of contributor work on Qt.

Some of the things you said are not legally possible. Please, learn about the situation a little bit, or you will be spreading confusion, even if you don’t wanted to.

Also, note that Digia might be tempted to do some things to limit the open source version, but that has a serious risk of being counter productive. Damaging the open license option, damages Qt, which is bad if you plan to sell licenses and support for Qt.

Note that, as Thiago said, the contributions to the development of Qt have increased from the partners that are not the owners of the Qt licensing rights, and all points that the trend is going to be stronger and stronger.

Certainly I probably wrote something in a wrong way, I apologize for this.

I’m glad to know that contributions in the Qt development are growing and I’ve no reason to doubt about this.

Anyway, if Digia really would like to maintain parity conditions (except, of curse, for static linking, private modification of qt source code, customer support etc..) we should not see things like:
“Qt 4.8.3 is now available as an update for all commercial SDK and stand-alone installer user….”
while on the site http://qt-project.org, for the non-commercial version, we still have only the old SDK with Qt libraries 4.8.1.
I know that there is the download for Qt4.8.3 and for recent qtcreator’s versions but,
is not the same thing because with the SDK the user know that the varous components
are compatible (IDE, Library, gdb debugger, mingw compiler…)
And overall, If Digia released a stable commercial SDK version with qt4.8.3, why there is no
equivalent open source version?
This sounds to me a strategy to maintain the open source sdk in late over the commercial one.

Did you think well’have an open source SDK with support to deploy applications (dynamically linked of course) on Android and IOS?!?
If yes, it will be released together with the commercial version of the SDK?

You are a bit mistaken. Even though it was done before closing of the acquisition, we have actually released both Qt 4.8.3 versions at the the exact same time. You seem to refer to updates Nokia Qt SDK, which are currently not available. That is outside of our control. It is a tool for making applications to Nokia’s phones using Qt. We are in process of making a new SDK for Qt 5 also for open-source users. In addition to the SDK, going forward we continue to provide added features and functionality for both open-source and commercial users. We will provide added value for commercial licenses also in the future, but not on the expense of the open-source version.

> Even though it was done before closing of the acquisition, we have actually
> released both Qt 4.8.3 versions at the the exact same time.

Yes, I say that in my post.

> You seem to refer to updates Nokia Qt SDK, which are currently not available.

Sure, this seems clear in my post, and the question is “Why?”

> That is outside of our control. It is a tool for making applications to Nokia’s phones using Qt.

Ah ok, so…who have control? Someone outside Digia only working for qt-project?
Qt SDK for Phone? Yes, for phone but also for desktop, isn’it?
I always used the SDK to target Desktop, on windows, linux and MacOSX!

> We are in process of making a new SDK for Qt 5 also for open-source users.
Ok, glad to know this, so open source SDK will pass from qt 4.8.1 with qtcreator 2.4.1 to
qt5 with qtcreator 2.6 without intermediate version?
How can you know this if open source sdk is “outside of your control”?
Open source SDK with Qt5 will be released in the same time of commercial version of QtSDK with Qt5?

> In addition to the SDK, going forward we continue to provide added features and functionality for both
> open-source and commercial users. We will provide added value for commercial licenses also in the future,
> but not on the expense of the open-source version.

Wow…I’m very happy to know but…
…can you answer my questions, please?
In particular regarding Android and IOS deployment with the future open source SDK?

Thank you for your post but, the answer are not very clear or complete to me.
Bye

(and is not clear to me what mistakes I wrote also, but is less important)

Many developers who use Qt find that the use of triple license GPLv3/LGPLv2/commercial is too complex. I think it would be best chnger license and adopt the new license Mozila, MPL 2.0. The Mozilla Public License 2.0 has the advantage of being compatible with the LGPL 2.1 and 3.0 but also with permissive licenses that the Apache Software License, BSD, MIT…

I was planing to use Qt 5 for my diploma thesis.
Didn’t you guys say that Android and iOS support will come in Qt 5?
It kind of rolls over all my plans.
Looks like I’ll have to do Qt 5 for the desktop, “Beans” for Android and learn Objective-C…

“There also exists a commercial-only Qt 4.8 iOS plugin available from Mediator Software , which can be leveraged to create Qt 4.8 based applications for iOS. Although not as complete as the Android port, it can already be used for many kinds of Qt applications. We will continue discussions to see whether it would be possible to leverage it within the Qt Project. We will also need to decide how to tackle the current iOS restrictions that hinder use of Qt Quick.”

Some clarifications on this: The iOS plugin is complete and supports all kinds of Qt (4.8) applications (QtGui, QML) on iOS. It has been used commercially by several companies to port their Qt projects to iOS. It is certainly more complete than the Android port, although it does not have Necessitas’ Qt Creator integration due to Apple requiring Xcode to be used to build/debug/deploy iOS applications.

There are no current iOS restrictions that prevent Qt Quick (4.8) being used on iOS. The V8 script engine required for Qt Quick use in Qt5 generates ARM object-code at runtime which prevents its use on iOS. Unless a byte-code interpreter is developed for V8, it will not ever be able to be used on iOS. The script engine used in Qt4.8 does not have this limitation as it does not do dynamic translation.

“It is certainly more complete than the Android port, although it does not have Necessitas’ Qt Creator integration due to Apple requiring Xcode to be used to build/debug/deploy iOS applications.”
Really? Do you have a study or comparison list to sustain your statement? Or is just your hunch?
I search for iOS plugin source code to make a comparison myself but I could not find it … maybe you can enlighten me on this matter.

I’m so waiting for iOS & Andoid ports out of the Qt box!!!! And also AppStore & Android market compliant!

But there is one more question: What about Windows 8(all of them)? Is it planned to use/port new WinRT and Windows RT? What about Metro applications? QML apps can look like Metro apps, but “look like” is not Metro! They can’t be sold over the Windows Market… Is where any plans?

P.S.: Good luck Qt team with new mentor! well, not really new… but you know what I mean….

@Maciej: Short answer is: In general no. It is better to use a commercial license when you are statically linking, unless you are ready to distribute also your application source code as required by LGPL.

Oh well, according to the LGPL you don’t really need to distribute the source code but only the object files. Still, it’s better to use a commercial license and have support if you are doing anything serious with Qt, no matter what the platform is.

@Tuukka. Ok, so to extend my question: Are you going to change the open-source license model in order to support static linking in commercial applications (different license type) or iOS port will be available only under the commercial license (in terms of commercial applications) ? It would be great to continue the discussion started a time ago: http://qt-project.org/wiki/Licensing-talk-about-mobile-platforms. Qt Everywhere is a great slogan, but it should be clear which ports will be fully available with the open-source license (also commercial applications) and which will not. Correct me if I’m wrong, but vxWorks port is currently not available as LGPL.

@JubiluM: Yes. The Labs blog articles are all carried over to this blog. Some articles are still missing, we are adding them as well. And also there are some other glitches here and there with layout and images. We are working those out.

They bought Qt by a fraction of what Nokia paid for it, with the only interest to resell it for a bigger price in the future.

They don’t have employees but resources that they like to milk and dump.

Their business ethics are low to non-existent. I wouldn’t believe a word these unpleasable directors/managers are writing, specially the ones that have long forgotten how to implement any kind of software and are only being used by the ones above their rank anyway, possibly for a bigger paycheck.

Once they realize they can’t milk more money out of their farm, they will change their so called strategy to remain in control of their so called company, eg the owners who were recently laughably running out of money.
Realistically very little innovation will come out of an archaic master-slave business model in a fiat monetary system.

Qt as any other human endeavour was primarily created by people who were having fun doing what they were doing. I feel that Qt’s future is even darker now and any real developers should take notice.

a)Except calling yourself “trueDigia” you did not provide any source that your accusations are based on.
b)This is, after all, the first official date of Digia-bound Qt assets. Are you enjoying the stupid rants at the birthday parties?
c)Buying something for the fraction of the cost is called “opportunity”. You should have stepped in and buy it yourself, or market it to VCs to realize a profit in the future. Did you do it? Obviously not.
d)Reselling a product for a bigger price is only possible when the product increased in value.
e)Your comments about “master-slave business model” and “fiat money” puts you firmly in the “Occupy whatever” category with the same amount of credibility.

Separately – I wish Qt a bright and prosperous future with or without Digia. I root for Digia’s commercial success. I have no connection to Digia in any way, shape or form. But I’ll be the first to purchase the license if Digia will release commercial license for Win, Mac,Linux, Android and IOS for a reasonable price (for my taste it is at or below 5K)

I wonder how Mark Zuckerberg feels about the credibility of wall street these days.
Qt is a good library, but if you want more proof about the other facts, not accusations, you can only find it by yourself, i can only help by giving a quotation.
“There is an ancient saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it.
Trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise.
Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.”

Stupid troll. You don’t even know what are you talking about. Where is not what many commercial products based on Qt in comparison to free and open-source products. You even have no idea about how do the new futures comes to Qt, who developing Qt… Digia or Nokia employees??? really? Read changelog, look at git repo, read bugs and patches. Have you ever read KDE Free Qt Foundationt??? Just shut your shitty mouth and RTFM!

And given the knowledge (by countless scientific journals, papers and research – if you “believe” in that sort of thing) that human memory is easily changed and in a constant state of flux depending on mood, situation and other inclinations you’re trying to convey that _memory_ is the thing one should believe and _not_ any other verifiable peer reviewed written knowledge?

The point that I wasn’t talking about science, scientific knowledge, peer review, programming, computer science, or engineering.. but just about a persons memory over written history about something, the last which can be easily distorted, specially when something must be hidden.
I’m not trolling, just saying facts, it’s up to you to believe it or not.
Anyway, it seems that you enjoy to satisfy your false sense of power and to feel superior to compensate your own deficiencies, unless of course you believe you are perfect and holder of universal truth, in which case proving you are totally delusional.

@BogDan: this is based on comments from commercial customers using both solutions to implement their Qt apps on iOS and Android. The intention was not to bash Necessitas, but to correct the wholly unsubstantiated (and in the eyes of both of our customers, incorrect) statement made by Tuukka that there is something missing from the iOS platform port that would prevent it’s use for application deployment, or that it is in some other way ‘incomplete’.

@qtnext & Maciej: in all jurisdictions apart from the US, software linked with an LGPL library does not constitute a ‘derivative work’. In the US this aspect of the license has never been tested in court. Despite Digia wishing to sell you a Qt license (and hence not encouraging LGPL use), you would be within the current understanding of the law to release a closed-source application linked statically with Qt, as long as you offered your application as a linkable object file. In reality, there is no way an end-user (even with an Apple Developer account) could update your app, even if they had the object files. That however, is not your problem…

So, you don’t have a comparison list to sustain your statement, but still you afford to say that “It is certainly more complete than the Android port” just because some of your *commercial* customers told you that. You see, Necessitas suite (yes Necessitas is much more than an android plugin) has 20K+ customers and I’m pretty sure that not all of them are happy with the port, also not all Qt customers are happy with Windows port, but it doesn’t mean that your port is better than Windows port! It is inevitable to have unhappy people when you have more than just “some *commercial* customers” !

@BogDan according to the Necessitas web page: “QtLocation and QtSensors mostly works, while QtMultimedia and QSound is, at the moment, still work in progress.”

All of these work on iOS, as well as multiple onscreen GL contexts, QtGameEnabler & Qt3D. However, as has been stated before, this is not a competition, and the point was not to start one. Perhaps the wording should have been “It is certainly at least as complete as the Android port”. Whatever. The point is that Digia is mis-informing the readers of this blog with regards to using Qt on iOS, and that is the reason why the clarifications were posted. Don’t read anything else into them.

>> Some clarifications on this: The iOS plugin is complete and supports all kinds of Qt (4.8) applications

You really need to improve your website. I’ve been looking into Qt on iOS casually and the impression I get is that it is far from complete or usable. Your website says 20% complete, launch date TBA, unanswered questions on forums about if the project is even still alive…

If it works, great! I would love to develop with Qt on iOS, but you really need to communicate this better.

Yes, the website needs to be completed, however, it does state that the 20% refers to the completion state of the website, not the software. Also there’s a download link, so if you were really interested in Qt on iOS, you could just download it and try it out (SDK is for device and simulator)…

But this can be a problem if we want to develop applications for external customers. I’m afraid Digia starts the journey saying: Qt will be everywhere but only in commercial version. I don’t think it’s a great move. Be realistic, Qt is not wide spread in mobile and will not be unless the major platforms, like iOS or Android will be available without huge cost. Digia can earn money on Qt in different ways, not only by selling commercial version, but for example by offering extensions to Qt/Qt Creator. Please Digia, think first about popularity and portability of Qt, next about how to make money on it.

I think you may have misunderstood what we tried to communicate. We do want Qt to be everywhere and for this reason we want both iOS and Android ports to be available through Qt Project for everyone. Both commercial and open-source users.

Yes, it is possible. But naturally we do not want you to do such thing. We want to grow Qt together with the whole ecosystem. There is no value gained for the entire Qt through forking. It would just split resources.

We want to have Qt for Android and iOS available both open-source and commercial. And it is possible to deploy also with both open-source and commercial. Currently the iOS AppStore requirements are such that it is in most cases best to deploy with a commercial Qt license. We will get back to this after the ports are available through the Qt Project.

Nice to see a new beginning for Qt. I look forward to see what good things Digia can do for Qt’s on-going development and success.

Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to hear from Digia whether they have/will have resources allocated to completing, maintaining and updating Qt Quick 2. In all of Digia’s public statements, I have not seen any mention of the Nokia Brisbane team who worked a lot on Qt Quick 2 being picked up by Digia. Is Digia fully committed to Qt Quick 2? If so, is there a group at Digia who will be working on this? I want to ensure that Qt Quick 2 will be actively developed by Digia and not become something that is only supported and developed by the community.

Qt was never a good fit for Nokia. They never knew what they had or what to do with it, only that Apple was soundly beating them in the phone space and that needed something, anything to stay afloat. Of course all that ended with WinMo.

I’m glad you guys finally jumped off that burning platform! I’ve heard more positive things coming out of the Qt community over the last few days than I have over the last year. Credit where it is due, Nokia did give us the LGPL and Creator (the best free IDE on the planet!), but they should have spun off Qt a year ago.

Good luck on the Android/iOS work but please don’t forget the desktop. Qt is the only full-featured, C++ development platform out there.

@Fabio: Short answers:
1. Yes, there will be a Qt Project SDK. We are already working with this, as you can also see from the mailing lists. It will first by for Qt 5.0, but it is possible to add Qt 4.8 target as well.
2. Nokia Qt SDK is tool for making applications to Nokia’s devices. I know that many have used it to other purposes as well, but at the end of the day it is still mainly created for making apps to Nokia phones. And it continues to be so.
3. Our plan is to have both Android and iOS within the Qt Project, and part of the SDK when they are ready for it.

@Turunen Tuukka – I have a question, now that Qt is no longer under the management of Nokia, do you consider bringing focus back to C++? Ever since the acquisition by Nokia, the vast majority of development efforts have been focused entirely on QtQuick. Providing an alternative is not bad on its own, but me as well as many other Qt users have expressed our disappointment by the fact all the cool new features are pretty much exclusive to QtQuick, with no public API to take advantage of the new features without QML.

There was a poll on the Qt project website, in which over 2/3 of the participants expressed the necessity for a modernized C++ GUI API, be that a QtQuick derivative or a completely new implementation. Even thou it is possible to use QtQuick features through C++ there is no public API, it is ugly, cumbersome and tedious. There are many people who want to stay away from QML and avoid its design, coding and performance overheads, C++11 features make stuff like property binding easier so there is really no need of JS, a VM, glue code and whatnot. Integrating LLVM can also enable rapid prototyping with very low, practically instant compile times.

We will develop both C++ and Qt Quick forward. Its not either or, both are very valuable for Qt. Already now you can see many items that are ongoing, if you look into the repositories and mailing lists. We will tell more about our plans and roadmap later.

#1, Happy Birthday / Congratulations
#2 Love reading the excitement and positive attitude (mostly) about alot of this, being a student and only just introduced into the QT ecosystem i am exicted to learn and develop with this software. Can’t wait to make my graduation projects and many many many more exciting applications.

certainly like your web-site but you have to take a look at the spelling on quite a few of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very troublesome to inform the reality on the other hand I’ll certainly come back again.